The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (40 page)

In the front hall he immediately asked, ‘When did Frau… naming her by her surname—when did she die?’

‘At six in the morning.’

‘When did she send for you?’

‘Eleven last night.’

‘Did you know that I was her doctor?’

‘Yes, but this was an emergency… and then… well, she asked especially for me. She wouldn’t let them call any other doctor.’

He stared at me, and a flush of red came into his pale, rather plump face. I could tell that he felt bitter. But that was exactly what I needed—all my energies were concentrating on getting a quick decision, for I could feel that my nerves wouldn’t hold out much longer. He was going to return a hostile reply, but then said more mildly, ‘You may think that you can dispense with my services, but it is still my official duty to confirm death—and establish the cause of death.’

I did not reply, but let him go into the room ahead of me. Then I stepped back, locked the door and put the key on the table. He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’

I faced him calmly. ‘We don’t have to establish the cause of death, we have to think of a different one. This lady called me to
treat her after… after suffering the consequences of an operation that went wrong. It was too late for me to save her, but I promised I would save her reputation, and that is what I’m going to do. And I am asking you to help me.’

His eyes were wide with astonishment. ‘You surely aren’t saying,’ he stammered, ‘that you’re asking me, as medical officer, to conceal a crime?’

‘Yes, I am. I must.’

‘So I’m to pay for your crime?’

‘I’ve told you, I didn’t touch this lady, or… or I wouldn’t be here talking to you, I would have put an end to myself by now. She has paid for her transgression, if that’s what you want to call it. There’s no need for the world to know about it. And I will not allow this lady’s reputation to be tarnished now for no good reason.’

My firm tone made him even angrier. ‘You will not allow… oh, so I suppose you’re my superior, or at least you think you are! Just try giving me orders… when you were summoned here from your country outpost I thought at once there was something fishy going on… nice practices you get up to, I must say, here’s a pretty sample of your skill! But now
I
will examine her,
I
will do it, and you may depend upon it that any account to which my name is signed will be correct. I won’t put my name to a lie.’

I kept quite calm. ‘This time you must. You won’t leave the room until you do.’

I put my hand in my pocket. In fact I did not have my revolver with me, but he jumped in alarm. I came a step closer and looked at him.

‘Listen, let me tell you something… and then we need not resort to desperate measures. I have reached a point where I set no store by my life or anyone else’s… I am anxious only to keep my promise that the manner of this death will remain secret. And listen to this too: I give you my word of honour that if you will sign the certificate saying that this lady died of… well, died accidentally, I will leave this city and the East Indies too in the course of this week… and
if you want, I will take my revolver and shoot myself as soon as the coffin is in the ground and I can be sure that no one…
no one
, you understand—can make any more inquiries. That ought to satisfy you—it
must
satisfy you.’

There must have been something menacing in my voice, something quite dangerous, because as I instinctively came closer he retreated with the obvious horror of… of someone fleeing from a man in frenzy running amok, wielding a
kris
. And suddenly he had changed… he cringed, so to speak, he was bemused, his hard attitude crumbled. He murmured something with a last faint protest. ‘It will be the first time in my life that I’ve signed a false certificate… still, I expect some form of words can be found… Who knows what would happen if… but I can’t simply…’

‘Of course not,’ I said helpfully, to strengthen his will—only move fast, move fast, said the tingling sensation in my temples—‘but now that you know you would only be hurting a living man and doing a terrible injury to a dead woman, I am sure you will not hesitate.’

He nodded. We approached the table. A few minutes later the certificate was made out; it was published later in the newspaper, and told a credible story of a heart attack. Then he rose and looked at me.

‘And you’ll leave this week, then?’

‘My word of honour.’

He looked at me again. I realised that he wanted to appear stern and objective. ‘I’ll see about a coffin at once,’ he said, to hide his embarrassment. But whatever it was about me that made me so… so dreadful, so tormented—he suddenly offered me his hand and shook mine with hearty good feeling. ‘I hope you will be better soon,’ he said—I didn’t know what he meant. Was I sick? Was I… was I mad? I accompanied him to the door and unlocked it—and it was with the last of my strength that I closed it again behind him. Then the tingling in my temples returned, everything swayed and went round before my eyes, and I collapsed beside her bed… just as a man running amok falls senseless at the end of his frenzied
career, his nerves broken.”

Once again he paused. I shivered slightly: was it the first shower carried on the morning wind that blew softly over the deck? But the tormented face, now partly visible in the reflected light of dawn, was getting control of itself again.

“I don’t know how long I lay on the mat like that. Then someone touched me. I came to myself with a start. It was the boy, timidly standing before me with his look of devotion and gazing uneasily at me.

‘Someone wants come in… wants see her…’

‘No one may come in.’

‘Yes… but…’

There was alarm in his eyes. He wanted to say something, but dared not. The faithful creature was in some kind of torment.

‘Who is it?’

He looked at me, trembling as if he feared a blow. And then he said—he named a name—how does such a lowly creature suddenly come by so much knowledge, how is it that at some moments these dull human souls show unspeakable tenderness?—then he said, very, very timidly, ‘It is
him
.’

I started again, understood at once, and I was immediately avid, impatient to set eyes on the unknown man. For strangely enough, you see, in the midst of all my agony, my fevered longing, fear and haste, I had entirely forgotten ‘him’, I had forgotten there was a man involved too… the man whom this woman had loved, to whom she had passionately given what she denied to me. Twelve, twenty-four hours ago I would still have hated him, I would have been ready to tear him to pieces. Now… well, I can’t tell you how much I wanted to see him, to… to love him because she had loved him.

I was suddenly at the door. There stood a young, very young fair-haired officer, very awkward, very slender, very pale. He looked like a child, so… so touchingly young, and I was unutterably shaken to see how hard he was trying to be a man and maintain his composure, hide his emotion. I saw at once that his hands were trembling as he raised them to his cap. I could have embraced him… because he was so exactly what I would have wished the man who had possessed her to be, not a seducer, not proud… no, still half a child, a pure, affectionate creature to whom she had given herself.

The young man stood before me awkwardly. My avid glance, my passionate haste as I rushed to let him in confused him yet more. The small moustache on his upper lip trembled treacherously… this young officer, this child, had to force himself not to sob out loud.

‘Forgive me,’ he said at last. ‘I would have liked to see Frau… I would so much have liked to see her again.’

Unconsciously, without any deliberate intention, I put my arm around the young stranger’s shoulders and led him in as if he were an invalid. He looked at me in surprise, with an infinitely warm and grateful expression… at that moment, some kind of understanding existed between the two of us of what we had in common. We went over to the dead woman. There she lay, white-faced, in white linen—I felt that my presence troubled him, so I stepped back to leave him alone with her. He went slowly closer with… with such reluctant, hesitant steps. I saw from the set of his shoulders the kind of turmoil that was ranging in him. He walked like… like a man walking into a mighty gale. And suddenly he fell to his knees beside the bed, just as I had done.

I came forward at once, raised him and led him to an armchair. He was not ashamed any more, but sobbed out his grief. I could say nothing—I just instinctively stroked his fair, childishly soft hair. He reached for my hand… very gently, yet anxiously… and suddenly I felt his eyes on me. ‘Tell me the truth, doctor,’ he stammered. ‘Did she lay hands on herself?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘And… I mean… is anyone… is someone to blame for her death?’

‘No,’ I said again, although a desire was rising in me to cry out, ‘I am! I am! I am! And so are you! The pair of us! And her obstinacy, her ill-starred obstinacy.’ But I controlled myself. I repeated, ‘No… no one is to blame. It was fate!’

‘I can’t believe it,’ he groaned, ‘I can’t believe it. She was at the ball only the day before yesterday, she waved to me. How is it possible, how could it happen?’

I told a lengthy lie. I did not betray her secret even to him. We talked together like two brothers over the next few days, as if irradiated by the emotion that bound us… we did not confess it to each other, but we both felt that our whole lives had depended on that woman. Sometimes the truth rose to my lips, choking me, but I gritted my teeth, and he never learned that she had been carrying his child, or that I had been asked to kill the child, his offspring, and she had taken it down into the abyss with her. Yet we talked of nothing but her in those days, when I was hiding away with him—for I forgot to tell you that they were looking for me. Her husband had arrived after the coffin was closed, and wouldn’t accept the medical findings. There were all kinds of rumours, and he was looking for me… but I couldn’t bear to see him when I knew that she had suffered in her marriage to him… I hid away, for four days I didn’t go out of the house, we neither of us left her lover’s apartment. He had booked me a passage under a false name so that I could get away easily. I went on board by night, like a thief, in case anyone recognised me. I have left everything I own behind… my house, all my work of the last seven years, my possessions, they’re all there for anyone who wants them… and the government gentlemen will have struck me off their records for deserting my post without leave. But I couldn’t live any longer in that house or in that city… in that world where everything reminded me of her. I fled like a thief in the night, just to escape her, just to forget. But… as I came on board at night, it was midnight, my friend was with me… they… they were just
hauling something up by crane, something rectangular and black… her coffin… do you hear that, her coffin? She has followed me here, just as I followed her… and I had to stand by and pretend to be a stranger, because he, her husband, was with it, it’s going back to England with him. Perhaps he plans to have an autopsy carried out there… he has snatched her back, she’s his again now, not ours, she no longer belongs to the two of us. But I am still here… I will go with her to the end… he will not, must not ever know about it. I will defend her secret against any attempt to… against this ruffian from whom she fled to her death. He will learn nothing, nothing… her secret is mine alone…

So now do you understand… do you realise why I can’t endure the company of human beings? I can’t bear their laughter, to hear them flirting and mating… for her coffin is stowed away down there in the hold, between bales of tea and Brazil nuts. I can’t get at it, the hold is locked, but I’m aware of it with all my senses, I know it is there every second of the day… even if they play waltzes and tangos up here. It’s stupid, the sea there washes over millions of dead, a corpse is rotting beneath every plot of ground on which we step… yet I can’t bear it, I cannot bear it when they give fancy dress balls and laugh so lasciviously. I feel her dead presence, and I know what she wants. I know it, I still have a duty to do… I’m not finished yet, her secret is not quite safe, she won’t let me go yet…”

Slow footsteps and slapping sounds came from amidships; the sailors were beginning to scour the deck. He started as if caught in a guilty act, and his strained face looked anxious. Rising, he murmured, “I’ll be off… I’ll be off.” It was painful to see him: his devastated glance, his swollen eyes, red with drink or tears. He didn’t want my pity; I sensed shame in his hunched form, endless shame for giving his story away to me during the night. On impulse, I asked him, “May I visit you in your cabin this afternoon?”

He looked at me—there was a derisive, harsh, sardonic set to his mouth. A touch of malevolence came out with every word, distorting it.

“Ah, your famous duty—the duty to help! I see. You were fortunate enough to make me talk by quoting that maxim. But no thank you, sir. Don’t think I feel better now that I have torn my guts out before you, shown you the filth inside me. There’s no mending my spoiled life any more… I have served the honourable Dutch government for nothing, I can wave goodbye to my pension—I come back to Europe a poor, penniless cur… a cur whining behind a coffin. You don’t run amok for long with impunity, you’re bound to be struck down in the end, and I hope it will soon all be over for me. No thank you, sir, I’ll turn down your kind offer… I have my own friends in my cabin, a few good bottles of old whisky that sometimes comfort me, and then I have my old friend of the past, although I didn’t turn it against myself when I should have done, my faithful Browning. In the end it will help me better than any talk. Please don’t try to… the one human right one has left is to die as one wishes, and keep well away from any stranger’s help.”

Once more he gave me a derisive, indeed challenging look, but I felt that it was really only in shame, endless shame. Then he hunched his shoulders, turned without a word of farewell and crossed the foredeck, which was already in bright sunlight, making for the cabins and holding himself in that curious way, leaning sideways, footsteps dragging. I never saw him again. I looked for him in our usual place that night, and the next night too. He kept out of sight, and I might have thought he was a dream of mine or a fantastic apparition had I not then noticed, among the passengers, a man with a black mourning band around his arm, a Dutch merchant, I was told, whose wife had just died of some tropical disease. I saw him walking up and down, grave and grieving, keeping away from the others, and the idea that I knew about his secret sorrow made me oddly timid. I always turned aside when he passed by, so as not to give away with so much as a glance that I knew more about his
sad story than he did himself.